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Dean James Byron McCormick: 1938–1947

Before Arizona Law

James Bryon McCormick was born in Illinois on February 28, 1895. He attended a military boarding school, Western Military Academy, in Alton, Illinois, and then attended Illinois Wesleyan University, in Bloomington, Illinois, for his undergraduate studies.[1] McCormick graduated from Illinois Wesleyan with an LL.B. in 1915 and afterwards practiced law in the area of Peoria, Illinois until 1926. During his last two years in Illinois, McCormick worked in a legal and directorial capacity for the Farmers’ State Bank of Emden.[2] McCormick left Illinois in 1926 and moved to Colorado; however, his life in Colorado was cut short when the sunny skies of Tucson beckoned, causing McCormick to begin his career at the University of Arizona College of Law in the fall of 1926.[3]

Arrival at Arizona Law

Although he had not worked as a law professor prior to arriving in Arizona, McCormick quickly found his stride. His first position as an “assistant professor of law” required him to teach a wide range of subjects, including Contracts, Agency, Equity Jurisdiction, Public Service Companies, Water Rights & Irrigation Law, and Private Corporations.[4] In 1930, McCormick left Tucson for a year in order to acquire an LL.M. from the University of Southern California[5]; upon his return, McCormick was promoted to the position of “associate professor of law.”[6] This cycle repeated in 1933, when McCormick received a Doctor of Judicial Science from Duke University and was then promoted to a full professor of law.[7] McCormick’s ascension continued in 1938, when he was chosen to be the College’s second Dean, succeeding Dean Samuel Fegtly.

Tenure as Dean

Upon being appointed to the deanship, McCormick’s initial plan was to walk the path blazed by Dean Fegtly: McCormick wrote that his plan was to continue “the policies long since established and maintained by Dean Emeritus Fegtly."[8] Although his overall approach was complementary to Fegtly’s, McCormick did change the College’s admission requirements in several important ways. By 1939, applicants to the law school were required to have received a “C” average in their prelaw undergraduate studies in order to qualify for admittance.[9] Additionally, applicants were required to have taken three—rather than two—years of prelaw courses prior to admission into the program, a change that notably broke from the two years required by accrediting institutions at the time.[10] McCormick also focused heavily upon the quality of education that current students were receiving—an example of this was the law library’s collection, which doubled during McCormick’s time as dean.[11]

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McCormick’s deanship also illustrates that vision must conform to context—when disruptive context arose in the form of World War II, the law school was forced to adapt. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the number of enrolled students at the College plummeted from 53 to 33, as either the draft or patriotism pushed students to enlist.[12] In response, McCormick made several changes. First, the College created an in-depth “Military Law” course, designed to prepare students who might become law clerks or judge advocates in the armed forces. It covered topics such as the history of military law; personnel, appointment, and duties of military-court officers; military-court procedures and jurisdiction; and a survey of civil and criminal war crimes.[13] A second change was the creation of a summer semester, through which students could complete an entire semester’s worth of work during the summer and thereby graduate more quickly.[14] Complimenting this goal, all holidays were eliminated from the course schedule, allowing professors and students to speed through the business of learning.[15]

McCormick’s steady ascension at the University of Arizona did not end with his promotion to Dean. In 1947, McCormick “reluctantly” left the College of Law in order to become the thirteenth President of the University of Arizona.[16] His presidency was marked by forward-thinking changes that allowed the University to expand in response to a state-wide population boom following World War II.[17] The University was ill-equipped to handle the increased demand in higher education that accompanied Arizona’s growth, and therefore McCormick strove to bring the University into what he called a “brick and mortar period.”[18] In line with this, McCormick convinced Arizona’s Legislature to appropriate more money for construction and development during his four-year presidency than had been appropriated for this purpose throughout the University’s combined 58-year existence up to that point.[19] McCormick also initiated research that caused the Legislature to vastly increase  appropriations to the University throughout the 1950s, enabling the University to expand alongside the state of Arizona well after McCormick stepped down in 1951.[20]

Ending the chapter

Having accomplished his duty of guiding the University through the hectic post-World War II period, McCormick resigned in 1951 and returned to the College of Law as a professor, teaching first-year Contracts, Equity II, Water Rights, Private Corporations, and Public Utilities.[21] Despite his attempts to step away from leadership roles, the University continued to frequently draw upon his talents; thus, after 1957, most of McCormick’s time was consumed with his role as advisor to the Arizona Board of Regents.[22] McCormick continued to advocate for the University in this role until his death in 1970.[23]

McCormick is still remembered at the College of Law, most pronouncedly through the J. Byron McCormick Society of Law and Public Affairs. The Society was founded in 1978 by friends and family of McCormick in recognition of his lifetime of public service and his “faith in the public discussions that are the lifeblood of a healthy democracy.”[24] The Society hosts an annual speaker series that “brings eminent national and international experts on law and public affairs to speak on the University of Arizona campus.”[25] McCormick speakers are, indeed, “eminent”: their ranks include Chief Justice William Rehnquist (1981), Justice Anthony Kennedy (1989), Justice Antonin Scalia (1990), Judge Richard Posner (1998), Journalist Linda Greenhouse (2003), U.S. Senator Olympia Snowe (2014), Justice Elena Kagan (2016), and Dean Erwin Chemerinsky (2018). 

-- Daniel Bowman (’22)